Two problems:

First, the absolute GARBAGE popularly available on the internet. For instance: http://www.hhal.net/id14.html

As you can see, "Cave man" lived only 13 years. We might ask how "Cave man" could reproduce if he died before puberty. (This is the thinking that has dominated the lifespan-estimation business since the Age of Enlightenment up 'till about fifty years ago.) Using this idiotic formula, we also see that "Neo-Paleolithic man" lived to be 18 years old, and we might ask who took care of his children. (There's no such thing as "Neo-Paleolithic man" anyhow. Barry Sears made it up to describe some of his nonsense about prehistoric people.

That's all well and good, since we can tell that anyone who believes this crap is a fool. Dismissed.

Second problem is that we can look at all the bones we want, but the first problem reappears when we discuss the lifespan of Paleolithic man with a biologist. Some questions arise:

Why do you think that Paleolithic man lived shorter lives than modern chimps in the wild?

Why do you think that chimp brains fully develop in five years and it takes human brains 25?

What IS the evolutionary advantage to spending an enormous amount of time and energy building the most complex structure in the animal kingdom (human brain) to be so (seemingly) underused?

Why do you think that human offspring are so helpless for so many years?

What modern evolutionary thinkers do is identify the adaptation that any structure or process or behavior MUST be. What was the selection ADVANTAGE to this?

Should we continue to hold beliefs which require that human beings be the exception to what we know about biology?

For fun: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/K_selection_theory


Like all wild animals.

I completely agree, but I find that people ignore common sense when it does not fit in with their beliefs. So, do we have anything more scientific/technical regarding ancient man?

I notice that coincidentally? with total fat, saturated fat, and monounsaturated fat, highest vs lowest intake,
the corresponding rates of pancreatic cancer, are roughly the same as the rates of cancer of men vs women.

Clumsy sentence. Try again;

Men......................45...................women...........34.5
high saturated fat...51.5.................low sat fat......33.1
high mono..............46.2................low mono.........32.9
total fat high........46.8................low total..........33.2
animal sats high.....52...................animal sats low.32.2

Never mind the statistical difference between these two columns. The fact is, the differences within the columns themselves are so slight, they might as well be the same numbers. Could it be that men said they ate a lot of
fat, including animal, and women said they ate very little?

They re-shuffled the deck; showed a correlation to sex at least equal to the correlation with various fat intakes. Made no attempt to "correct" for this.

They make a very specific claim; that pancreatic cancer is related to fat intake after combining the male and female data.

People have done worse things for money.

Well done teaser!

Shows just how easy it is to make the data say what a researcher wants it to say doesn't it?

It all reminds me of highschool chemistry (and college too, for that matter). We did these chemistry demonstrations which the teacher called experiments. But they weren't really experiments, because we all knew "truth" ahead of time and we were graded not on the integrity of the experiment so much as by whether we got the right answer. It was more advantageous for us to cheat and get the right answer, fudging our lab books, than to get an answer the teacher did not want.

In "real life" the stakes to a researcher are much higher than the grade on an assignment. Very few researchers have the charisma and shrewdness to be able to build a career around contrarian study results. The opposition is too intense. But fudging the lab book is really pretty easy.

I'm sorry, jcass. If you don't like or respect the study's results, that's fine. Howver, casting aspersions on the National Institutes of Health and NCI folks is really unnecessary. They make up the Best and Brightest of the researchers in our country. They're NOT industry-sponsored. Frankly, they are paid much less than they'd receive if they chose to practice medicine.

EDIT: Deleted

Nobody said they weren't the "best and brightest". You can be the best and the brightest and still report inaccurate and skewed study results -- as appears to have been done in that study.

I say let people spread bad information about saturated fats and promote shoddy science. It will help keep the prices down and leave more for ME! Bwaa haa haa!!!!

(Just kidding, of course....but please don't buy up all of my butter and coconut cream please! )

The best and brightest doesn't really mean anything. I work at a University and am surrounded by PhD's of all disciplines in Education and half of them are vegetarians and vegans. They promote independent thinking in their students, but can't see their way out of a paper bag when it comes to nutrition. They are definitely not thinking for themselves and definitely not questioning any dietary advice they were fed at whatever point in their lives.

I've read that it's pretty hard to get your papers published if they don't reach the proper conclusions about the low-fat dogma. I'd imagine it's doubly difficult if you're working at a government agency. Data-massaging happens at all levels, we've seen it time and time again.

But I'm not in academia or science, just a mindless Taubes cult member.

On another board, LFTM claimed to be a doctor. When I saw the title of this thread, I was really expecting her to site more than one questionable study.

sigh- these are the medical professionals we have to listen to?

Yeah, we were promised multiple references!

Perhaps it would be good to have a little perspective. LTFM is a zero-carber, so unless she's eating protein-isolated frankenfoods, she's probably still up around 45%-50% fat - the composition of "lean" meat. So what we're arguing about is 50% vs. 70%, not the recommended 30% or less that we hear about.

I don't avoid saturated fat, I thrive on it. Will I live to 100? don't know, but I'm a 26 year diabetic, now 64 years old, and not on medications, with normal blood sugars. I wouldn't consider going any other way. Haven't had as much as a cold, since going VLC, hard to believe it's impairing my health in any way.

Hey, you're not alone . The High Fat crowd certainly has its gurus on bookshelves and the Net. All cults operate in this fashion. They dismiss information which doesn't conform with their mind set. That's OK. We all have to establish our own risk parameters in life.

Intuition is a poor substitute for science, but it's part of our pop-culture . Folks who feel great on a LC, High Fat diet naturally infer that there's no harm in such a regimen. They want to keep the good times rollin' and avoid any contemplation that they're actually harming themselves........

Grease is the word (is the word that they heard)
It's got groove, it's got meaning
Grease is the time, is the place, is the motion
Grease is the way we are feeling

Bring on the bacon..........